Art Basel 2017 - Special selection

Thirty-six full color actor portraits are in Edo style accompanied by poems and a delightful double page print by Utamaro. "The large head and the half length type of actor print had been among the great innovations of the 1780s and 1790s and these two artists excelled in these striking forms of portraiture, which recalled Western prints from the time of Durer onward, focusing on the features of the person portrayed with close-up intensity."Hiller. pg. 573.

Paris, Editions des Cahiers Libres
First book with an etching by Tanguy (ref. Wittrock 1) for poems by Paul Eluard. There were only 22 copies of the book with the etching; 10 regular copies with text printed in the plate and 12 author’s copies on blue mauve paper with the etching on Japon nacré. This copy is one of the 12 author’s copies with a dedication by Paul Eluard to Theodore Fraenkel, a doctor and classmate of André Breton. Exceptional example of this rare book, bound in leather by A. Demules. Edition of 12.

Edition of 40 copies, numbered and signed by the artist and publisher, in it's original parchment cover. Published by Iliazd.

Reference: Lust No. 162-173

Alberto Giacometti's austere figures and portraits speak to human existence in a post-war era defined by alienation and uncertainty. Fascinated by the practice of representing the same sitter again and again to reveal the constant variability of a single person, Giacometti often took his wife, his mother, and his brother as subjects. In the series of 12 prints from which this work originates, the artist illustrates the Dada writer and editor Iliazd (Ilia Zdanevich), who was known as the architect, designer, and publisher of illustrated books of the School of Paris.

A unique flip book using only lines in movement dedicated to Robert Rauschenberg. Breer was best known for his films, which combine abstract and representational painting, hand-drawn rotoscoping, original 16mm and 8mm film footage, photographs, and other materials. Breer was an experimental filmmaker, painter, and sculptor. This unpaginated flip book is an experiment that helped him transit from painting to films. "I made a flip book of small paintings to try to understand how I arrived at making this final painting. I was working in very simple geometric forms, hard edge, conventional, you know, more or less conventional neo-plasticism. So, this first flip book then became the basis for a film on my next visit to America, which was that year, 1952, and yet I didn’t really use those original images. I had to invent my own system because I had no training in filmmaking at all and certainly none in animation. I only knew that I had to do one frame at a time."

Set comprises 16 seminal books by the artist: Twentysix Gasoline Stations, Various Small Fires, Some Los Angeles Apartments, Every Building on the Sunset Strip, Thirtyfour Parking Lots, Royal Road Test, Business Cards, Nine Swimming Pools, Crackers, Babycakes, Real Estate Opportunities, A Few Palm Trees, Dutch Details, Records, Colored People, and Hard Light. All signed or inscribed to Henry except Babycakes and Various Small Fires, which have the rare ‚Äùcompliments of author card‚Äù from Ruscha enclosed. Hopkins was the curator at the LA County Museum in the 1960s and bought Ed's first painting for the museum. Henry Hopkins directed the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art before returning to UCLA, where he led the Wight Art Gallery and the Hammer Museum. Dimensions variable.

Marcel BroodthaersLa Conqu√™te de l'espace, Atlas √† l‚Äôusage des artistes et des militaires, (The conquest of space, atlas for the use of artists and the military), 1975
6343-BK

1 7/16 x 15/16 in. (3.8 x 2.5 cm)

38 pages in slipcase, offset lithograph, containing silhouettes of a selection of 32 countries of the world shrunk to the same scale as Belgium, with no difference in size, arranged alphabetically. Published by Edition Lebeer Hossmann, Brussels and Hamburg. A tiny and most rare important final artist's book by Broodthaers that plays on language, scale, and function‚Äîit is transportable, but useless. This book was published shortly before the artist's unexpected death in 1976 thus all copies remain unsigned and are stamped ‚ÄúEstate M Broodthaers‚Äù and numbered by the publisher. Number 17 of 50 copies.

Former Warhol Factory acolyte, Berlin narcissistically documented her life via Polaroid photographs. This book is a unique example from a series of “tit paintings”—colorful prints made by pressing her painted or inked breasts on paper. Inscribed “For Bob with love, Brigid.” Ex-collection Robert Rauschenberg.

Complete set of four unsigned heliogravures in color by Cy Twombly and eight poems by Octavio Paz, hors-texte, title, justification, colophon, and reproductions of the artist's drawings, text in English and German, on smooth wove and laid papers, signed on the colophon by Octavio Paz and Cy Twombly. Published by Udo and Anette Brandhorst, Cologne. 100 copies of the Special Edition (the total edition was 1,000), bound in two volumes (as issued), with full margins, in excellent condition, original paper-covered portfolios, and original paper covered slipcase.

In 2002, Bourgeois distilled her childhood memories of a river and the garden in her family’s backyard in a unique fabric book entitled Ode à la Bièvre. She reminiscences through images and text; “With the soil from that river we planted geraniums, masses of peonies, and beds of asparagus ...and honeysuckle that smelled so sweet in the rain.” Using her own garments as raw material to make sewn fabric collages, she evoked feelings and memories through lines, shapes, and colors. This 54-page book (New York: Matthew Zucker, 2007) faithfully reproduces that original textile work. Each book is signed and numbered on the colophon and includes two signed photographs digitally printed on Verona paper and mounted on 300 gram watercolor paper with the respective titles: “The Garden in Antony, 1921” and “The Bièvre River, 1951.” Housed in a blind embossed slipcase, each book is uniquely bound with hand dyed and distressed Japanese linen.

Each book is handmade from repurposed fabrics the artist found in Mexico City. Camil’s interventions include cutting shapes common in cloth making such as sleeves, collars, torsos, and recombining them in a colorful array, hand sewn into a double sided sequence. She designed small buttonholes in between the panels so the work can be hung as a banner as well, choosing either side. This sort of interaction between the work and the viewer is a key element throughout Camil’s oeuvre, which even includes works to be worn or walked on.

Pia Camil (b. 1980) lives and works in Mexico City. She has a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art, London. Her work has been exhibited internationally, with recent solo-exhibitions including A Pot for a Latch, New Museum, New York (2016); Skins, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2015); The Little Dog Laughed, Blum & Poe, Los Angeles (2014); and Cuadrado Negro, Basque Museum Centre for Contemporary Art, Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain (2013).